Proposes a standardized orthography for the English Creole vernacular of Trinadad and Tobago. The reasons for this standardization are to meet the needs of a local population writing more and more in Creole, and to prepare a standard reference dictionary of the language. (43 references) (Author/CB)

The grammaticalization of "liao" as a main verb in tenth-century vernacular texts to "le" as an aspectual particle in modern Chinese is investigated. The change is attributed to the resultative construction coming into existence in the language and to instances where the verb took sentential subjects or occurred in temporal clauses only. (17…

Object deletion in Classical Arabic is semantically marked on two levels: ( 1) dropping the object deliberately but functionally; and (2) emptying the object slot and focusing on the verbal action. The second level of object deletion stresses the verbal action. (20 references) (GLR)

Discusses Polish Christmas carols from historical and linguistic perspectives, and suggests that they provide insight into Polish culture and customs. (24 references) (Author/OD)

Examination of a case of artificial language boundaries (Guere versus Wobe) supports arguments for a monolingual nucleus with multilingual satellites in the Ivory Coast. The Ivory Coast's multiple languages exaggerate linguistic heterogeneity. Integrating language attitude data into language classification could aid the language planning and…

Describes DLT, the multilingual machine translation system that uses Esperanto as an intermediate language in which substantial portions of the translation subprocesses are carried out. The criteria for choosing an intermediate language and the reasons for preferring Esperanto over other languages are explained. (Author/DJD)

Examines changes in formulaic speech in China following the revolution and the Cultural Revolution, by studying politeness formulae and Public Criticism Meetings. Data indicate that routine formulae code cultural norms and that formulaic inventory changes result from the need to code new social facts. (JL)

Comparison of the reading comprehension processes used by Hebrew-speaking students of French in both their native and second languages found that there was a transfer of strategies from the native to the second language, although in the second language, students used more strategies that did not lead to the selection of a correct response than in…

Argues that current attempts to show that forward directionality effects can also be induced in Japanese acquisition do not succeed in supporting the forward directionality preference of anaphora. (57 references) (Author/CB)

Describes a pilot language renewal program--Tachi as a Second Language--implemented in a California preschool. (RAE)

Explores the problems and procedures of producing test norms for bilingual populations. The difficulty encountered in defining subpopulations for separate test norm production and empirical classification is considered, and four practical solutions are detailed: school classification, person classification, test score classification, and language…

Focuses on the attempts of Portuguese-speaking e-mail users to carry out "unofficial" spelling reforms as they deal with diacritical markings. The use of these markings on the Internet reflects individual user's felt need for accentuation. The preference for word-final accentuation over other types is much more harmonious to type and read than are…

This paper discusses the validity and utility of contrastive analysis for language teaching, focusing on the utility of contrastive analysis over error analysis in analyzing adverbial positioning in sentences produced by two groups of native speakers of English and Arabic. Contains 13 references. (MDM)

This article presents the goals, design, and pilot-testing results of a new oral interview procedure for eliciting a representative sample of spontaneous Japanese language abilities from children aged 5 through 10. Pilot results show that the procedure elicits a language sample that is superior in quality and quantity to other existing Japanese…

Discusses the syntactic properties of child Dutch root infinitives (RIs) in light of recent findings concerning the structure of adult Dutch. The data examined offer support for those analyses that treat RIs in terms of truncated structures and speak against proposals that interpret RIs as root CPs. (80 references) (MDM)